Chapter 4_Cracks In The Glass

Aoi’s lungs burned as the hallway narrowed around them, but her feet refused to move. Her brother’s face — or what wore his face — still stared at her from the mirror ahead. His expression was frozen in that unnerving, wide grin. Familiar… but wrong.

Yuto’s grip on her wrist tightened. His voice, stripped of bravado, cracked through the still air.

"Aoi, I’m serious… We should go."

The reflections behind them shifted — dozens of versions of themselves, pressed flat against the mirror walls, their eyes dull, their faces slack. But slowly, unnaturally, the smiles began to spread across every reflection. Their lips peeled back, revealing grins that didn’t reach their eyes — grins stretched too wide for human anatomy.

But they weren’t moving beyond the glass. Not yet.

Aoi took a breath, steady but shaky. Her eyes stayed locked on Haru’s reflection, the older, distorted version of him inside the mirror.

"I saw him," she whispered, barely aware of her own voice.

Yuto shook his head. "You saw something." His words stumbled, rushed, layered over shallow breaths. "Whatever’s in here, it’s not him."

Aoi didn’t respond. Her heartbeat thudded like war drums beneath her ribs, but her mind sifted through fragments — memories, the legend, the fading sound of her brother’s real voice before it was swallowed by glass.

"Don’t trust the reflections."

She remembered it clearly now. The voice wasn’t only desperate — it was warning her.

A creak echoed beneath their feet as the warped floor shifted again. Dust and broken glass crunched faintly under Yuto’s sneakers as he stepped backward, dragging Aoi with him.

"We’re not ready for this," he hissed. "This isn’t a game — this place, it’s…"

He trailed off, eyes darting to the walls. His reflection was staring directly at him, its expression unchanged even as his face twisted with fear.

Aoi turned her head slightly, testing the mirrors’ behavior. Her real body moved — the reflections lagged, then caught up… almost too late. Like the glass world was syncing itself imperfectly to reality.

Behind her, Yuto whispered, "It’s copying us… but sloppy. Like… like it’s learning."

She exhaled slowly, watching their countless duplicates distort and stretch across the walls. Her mind flashed with the legend again — If your reflection smiles before you do… run. But no one had ever said what to do if it was already smiling.

Her eyes flicked to the nearest cracked mirror, jagged spiderweb fractures slicing through the glass. From the other side, her reflection grinned wider — teeth sharp, expression rippling like liquid beneath the surface.

Yuto’s phone buzzed faintly in his pocket, a low battery warning flickering across the screen. His light dimmed.

The shadows pressed in closer.

Neither of them spoke for several seconds, only the faint tap of water dripping in the distance filling the silence. The reflections pressed their palms to the inside of the glass, their fingertips spreading wide, mimicking them almost perfectly.

Almost.

Then, softly, Yuto asked, "What happens… if they stop copying us completely?"

Aoi’s throat tightened, a cold coil of fear wrapping around her spine.

She didn’t have an answer.

Not yet.

But the walls creaked again, the mirrors pulsing as though alive, and somewhere deeper in the maze — beyond glass, beyond reality — something was waiting for them to find out.

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